State of Origin helps Nine to big win

An audience of 2.472m viewers watched NSW beat Queensland in the second match of the 2012 State of Origin Rugby League on Nine.

The match was Wednesday’s clear ratings winner, followed by the pre and post match wrap-ups but was down slightly on the first game result of 2.51m.

However, it was the highest ever game 2 result, with a peak of 2.823m.

Across the five city metro markets, Sydney was the clear winner with 1.185m average viewers ahead of Brisbane’s 774,000. Melbourne had 366,000 viewers while Adelaide had 68,000 and perth 79,000, according to preliminary results from OzTam.

The post-match wrap up took 1.978m viewers, but did not screen in Melbourne while the pre-match show took 1.558m viewers, but did not screen in Adelaide or Perth.

Nine was the clear winner on the night, as The Block won in regular viewing, fourth overall, taking 1.378m followed Nine News taking 1.309m viewers in fifth place.

Seven News followed in sixth place with 1.288m viewers followed by Nine’s A Current Affair at 6.30pm which took 1.177m.

MasterChef was Ten’s highest rating show with 1.054m viewers in ninth place, which ran from 7pm to 8.30pm and ABC News was the ABC’s highest rating show on 997,000.

Seven, so as not to compete against the State of Origin in NSW and Queensland, broadcast Border Security: Australia’s Frontline at 7:30pm and The Force: Behind the Lines at 8pm, taking 310,000 and 232,000 respectively.

In Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, Seven broadcast Australia’s Got Talent at 7.30pm to take 534,000. The episode will air in Queensland and NSW on Thursday night.

Debuting against the football on the ABC at 8pm, Myf Warhurst’s Nice, a show that follows the former Spicks and Specks team leader around Australia discovering pop culture items from her youth took 503,000 viewers. It was followed by Andrew Denton’s Randling which took 407,000 viewers in 23rd spot.

@ Robbo… Well, thankfully you’re not head of Nine Sport. Again, regardless of your sporting preferences, the SOO remains a staggering cap in the NRL’s cap. The highest rating programme on Australian television for a sport largely confined to two states. And not one game, but three games too all pulling 2.5-million plus audiences (which is what I believe the AFL grand final does nationally.) The decider in a couple of weeks could top three-million. So again, yes, AFL and rugby would kill for something like that.

Kevin you are spot on, the others don’t know what they are talking about, if you include all ratings ie. regional figures origin gets 4million viewers just australia wide. Plus new zealand and other overseas markets it is a major draw card. Last years AFL grand final drew total 3.572million, 150,000 more then leagues. Essentially its like having 4 grand finals for NRL.